Ebooks: what are they good for?

ebooks-what are they good for?
#ebooksuwe2014
Ken Chad, Ken Chad Consulting Ltd
www.kenchadconsulting.com
ken@kenchadconsulting.com
Tel: +44 (0)7788727845
Twitter @kenchad
kenchadconsulting

relax...this is food for thought
you don’t need to take notes
the presentation is on my website
I have provided citations and links

Part 1: the guiding themes
(Part 2-ways to look at needs and solutions)

what are we talking about?
Book = "more than 48 pages exclusive of the cover
pages“ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphlet

so already some tricky questions.......
my themes

but don’t worry.
It’s not as hard
as the
questions in
this.......
http://www.newscientist.com/

Consumerization is the reorientation of product and service designs
around the individual end user. The emergence of the individual
consumer as the primary driver of product and service design
originated from and is most commonly seen as a major IT industry shift
The primary impact of consumerization is that it is forcing businesses..
to rethink the way they procure and manage IT equipment and
services.
Products have become easier to use, and cloud-based, software-as-a-
service offerings are addressing an ever-widening range of business
needs
consumerisation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumerization

Businesses are forced to operate at a new pace as they contend with
informed customers, smart competitors, and employees who choose to
use their own technology for work. These trends change how firms use
information technology: to be smarter, more secure, and above all
nimble.
This year's top technology trends take a customer-oriented,
outside-in view of information technology changes using the
themes of engaged, smart, nimble, and secure. Enterprise architects
and technology strategists must understand these trends and how
specific emerging technologies can be employed to position their firms ahead
of the changes.
Top Technology Trends To Watch: 2014 To 2016. By Brian Hopkins with Leslie Owens, John C.
McCarthy, Abigail Komlenic. Forrester [blog] 4 November2013
top technology trends to watch: 2014 to 2016
http://www.forrester.com/Top+Technology+Trends+To+Watch+2014+To+2016/fulltext/-/E-RES104141
Forrester

The market is undergoing a shift to more integrated
systems ...Driving this trend is the user desire for lower
cost, simplicity...
In the mobile world, vendors including Apple, Google
and Microsoft drive varying degrees of control across and
end-to-end ecosystem extending the client through the
apps.
top technology trends 2013
http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2209615

“The big picture is this.
There are three companies
competing to be the
internet platform of the
future-Apple, Google and
Facebook”.
Is Apple dying? By Bryan Appleyard. New Statesman
22-28 November 2013 http://www.newstatesman.com/

“Google’s approach is based on its near
monopoly over advertising and its drive to
feed this by a rapid expansion of its ability
to acquire and control information
Facebook pursues a massive expansion of
the idea of the social network
Apple aims at the tightest possible
integration of hardware and software
that ties users into its systems
At the moment Google is favourite for
gold….”
Is Apple dying? By Bryan Appleyard. New Statesman
22-28 November 2013 http://www.newstatesman.com/

the customer experience..
How good is the customer experience of ebooks at your library?
The attribute most valued by consumers, assuming a
product is at least in the general vicinity of a need, is
ease-of-use....all things being equal, consumers prefer
a superior user experience.
It is impossible for a user experience to be too
good. Competitors can only hope to match or surpass the
original product when it comes to the user
experience...(has anyone turned to an “inferior” product
because the better one was too enjoyable?).
‘What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong’. By Ben Thompson. Stratechery [blog]. 22 September 2013
http://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got-wrong/

the customer experience...
we say we care about customers but do our systems really
reflect that?
“The business [library?] buyer famously, does not care
about the user experience. They are not the user, and
so items that change how a product feels or that eliminate
small annoyances simply don’t make it into their rational
decision making process”
How high is customer experience on your list of criteria when
selecting an ebook or ebook collection/platform?
‘What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong’. By Ben Thompson. Stratechery [blog]. 22 September 2013
http://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got-wrong/

the ebook ‘consumer’ writer, reader,
researcher
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/03/how-having-an-e-
reader-has-changed-my-reading-habits
6th March 2014
“what am I going to read, what
am I going to read next …is
there enough of this book left
for today or should I take
another”
When I finish a book, I can flick
through my options and choose
something I feel
like..wherever I am at the
time. If I am out of the house,
I take the e-reader with me,
all the time. I don’t even think
about it. I’m not talking about
travel, I mean if I am running
errands. If I’m on the bus or the
metro and reading, it’s what I’m
using to read

the ebook ‘consumer’ writer, reader,
researcher
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/03/how-having-an-e-
reader-has-changed-my-reading-habits
6th March 2014
The second way the e-reader
has unexpectedly changed
my habits, is that I buy
research books ..instead
of getting them out of the
library. This has the
advantage of instant
gratification—I can get the
book instantly, when I want
it—and of being much better
for my wrists, because
research books tend to be
enormous hardbacks.

‘I bought the first iPad
and quickly realised it
was the solution to
my problems, I
recognised its
potential to
revolutionise how
students access
information and I
adopted it early.’
‘I am now a
completely paperless
student. Everything I
need to study
medicine is in my
hand’
the ebook ‘consumer’-a student perspective
Joshua Harding a
second year
medical student at
Warwick Medical
speaking at UKSG
conference 2013
http://www.slideshar
e.net/UKSG/0930-
harding

the ‘consumer’ - a student perspective
here is what one student wants……
• Intuitive navigation
• Interactive, movies, animations, music, podcasts,
slideshows, interactive images, 3D models
• Search through the entire book
• Highlight text, make notes & share them
• Purchase per chapter
• Free content updates
• Joshua Harding a second year medical student at Warwick Medical speaking at UKSG conference 2013
• http://www.slideshare.net/UKSG/0930-harding

http://ebmotmet.wikispaces.com

what do students use ebooks for?

what do students use ebooks for?
Question Course Law: Response
What is the problem you are
facing (when you are looking
for/using an ebook).
Essay/assignment
Background reading
They are really useful close to assignment
hand in date when all the physical copies
are on loan. I use the ebooks when I can’t
find physical book – but not always,
sometimes I will elect to use the ebook..
Course: Psychology
Course reading generally, background
reading and improving own
knowledge of subject.

Student Focus Group November 2011
Undergraduate: ‘I use e-books to back up what I find on
Wikipedia when I don’t understand the subject’.
‘the books I want are never there [the library] so I sit at
home and use Google Scholar/Google-books (as they
are there and free) for general essays and also reading
round subjects

academics: what do you see as the main
value of ebooks?
Ease of access and availability. We can direct
students to material and be certain there will be
enough copies.
Better enables off campus access–inc on mobile
devices
Access anytime (in an ideal world) to targeted
content
Some use in research
University of York

publishers: why ebooks?
Getting content out faster and more
efficiently
CUP
Research -many of our books are research
focussed and complimentary to journals—
[they] fit in a different place in the research
workflow... ebooks are particularly useful in
getting some basic knowledge on an
unfamiliar topic and for background research.
Elsevier
Access to content -esp.
remotely. [Key benefits are]
discoverability, [and the] ability
to full text search within and
across whole corpus of ebooks.
[The] User gets straight to
content.
Can copy paste..[it’s] much
more of an interactive
environment..
Palgrave McMillan
[Our] ebooks are mostly scientific books,
serving a broad audience which mainly
consists of researchers, but students as well.
They are using our content for referencing.
Springer

http://ebookchallenge.org.uk/
Three overriding ebook themes:
creation curation and consumption

Manchester University Press
The MUP ebook strategy is driven by consumer, scholarly and technology
factors. The basic aim is improved dissemination of scholarly works. In
summary the reasons for ebooks are essentially:
Increased dissemination
Match with consumer behaviour. For example digital enables consumers
to broaden their palette. Browsing content becomes much easier and in
turn exposes the reader to content that may previously have been
ignored.
More value from our backlist. E offers a good opportunity to extend the
lifespan of good scholarly content by freeing it from the constraints of
the print paradigm. In many respects, the ebook is a natural progression
from POD
The challenge of ebooks in academic institutions. (JISC) project. Creation of ebooks: Case study. Manchester
University Press
http://ebookchallenge.org.uk/institutional-case-studies/

Open Nottingham (University)
A key driver is the theme of opening up access to all students at any
(including international) campus. We already had substantial OER
material and we wanted to push ahead and experiment with extending
those resources.
An important issue was to address the increasing uptake of mobile
devices, which OER on a website only partially meets at present.
Once again it’s about getting material into the environment where
students are. We also wanted to push ahead on reusing resources.
Innovation is also a driver. We need to push boundaries and experiment
The challenge of ebooks in academic institutions. (JISC) project. Creation of ebooks: Case
study. University of Nottingham: Open Nottingham programme

librarians: why ebooks?
What key issues are ebooks addressing?
• The key benefit of ebooks is an improvement in terms of access, which
includes discovery of the resources [and] searchability within the
resource content
• Availability 24/7 and to off-campus users
• New research collections can also be offered and existing ones
expanded quickly through commercially available ebook aggregations
• High quality research collections improve the university's reputation
and so attract academics and researchers
• Saving in shelf space ---which is at a premium
(University of York)

Whilst the days of visiting the library to use or borrow a printed book
have not disappeared, at the University of Hertfordshire the use of
printed books continues to decline significantly year on year. Given the
anywhere, anytime immediacy of availability of the ebook combined with
multi-user simultaneous access and improved search facilities, this is
unsurprising.
(University of Hertfordshire)

Concentrated demand over short time scales
large numbers of students may require access to chapters or sections of
books at the same time, for example, when they are preparing for a
seminar. The library could never buy sufficient numbers of paper copies
to satisfy this demand, and as the usage period is intense but relatively
brief, it would be nigh on impossible to optimise the loan periods of print
copies to match demand.
Access to research materials
Final year undergraduates are amongst the heaviest users of the PDA e-
book services. The library suspects that this is linked to their dissertation
studies. It may also be coincidental that the emergence of PDA has
coincided with a marked decline in Inter-library loan requests for
monographs, but they consider it highly likely that final year students
are using PDA instead of ILL..
(University of Newcastle)

http://ebookchallenge.org.uk/consumption/
consumption

the issues in more detail
- a few examples from the
web site

learning advantage
“what set Inkling’s titles apart are their “natively digital”
origins and built-in interactivity features. Rather than being
a more or less faithful electronic version of a traditional
print textbook, Inkling incorporates multimedia
elements, including video and 3D objects, to
enhance the learning experience. For example, a title
about music appreciation involves integrated tracks by
classical composers, while biology students can use the
iPad’s pinch-and-zoom functionality to get a closer look at
organs in the human body”.
An Inkling of the Future? Enhanced Ebooks and the College Textbook
Market. By Yvette M. Chin. Digital Book World March 31, 2011

discoverability & access
“The iTunes platform is a major positive factor in discovery
and means for example that the ebooks we produce are
immediately discoverable through Google too.”
University of Nottingham (Open Nottingham): (creation) Case study

discoverability & access
Searching within e-Books
“The ability to search within and across e-book content is
identified as a primary advantage of e-books, regardless of
whether a respondent prefers print books or e-books.
Essentially, the power and convenience associated with
search within the e-book environment is highly valued,
“Being able to search the book for keywords is fantastic. It
has changed how I read. Especially when looking for
secondary sources that lie further outside my field, but
might be appropriate.”(Graduate Student, Arts & Humanities)
University of California Libraries UC Libraries Academic e-Book Usage Survey.Springer
eBook Pilot Project. May 2011

convenience
“Remote access is becoming more important to learners:
they want to be able to access resources at a time and
place to suit them, often on a device of their
choosing. This places demands on platforms in terms of
access, authentication and usability”.
JISC TechWatch: Preparing for Effective Adoption and Use of Ebooks in
Education. November 2012. [page 31]
“The ability to download chapters or portions of
the e-book to a device for later use is a highly valued
feature, with 93% of respondents rating it as very or
somewhat important”.
University of California Libraries UC Libraries Academic e-Book Usage Survey. Springer
eBook Pilot Project. May 2011

convenience
“One criticism of many of these different [ebook] platforms
[used in Education] is that they can be unnecessarily
complex and difficult to use. When encountering
complex and diverse interfaces, learners often resort to
using search engines such as Google …When faced
with complex and complicated access methods and
gateways, learners not only fail to comprehend the
technology employed, but they also fail to see the need to
understand it or why they should want to”
From: JISC TechWatch: Preparing for Effective Adoption and Use of Ebooks in
Education. November 2012.

social
“there’s also a social dimension to Inkling’s iPad app.
Readers can write notes “in the margins” that can be
shared to other students, inspiring discussion and
interaction between students that might otherwise be
engaged in solitary reading of the course material.
Professors can also “enhance” the material by providing
their own notes to share with students.”
An Inkling of the Future? Enhanced Ebooks and the College Textbook Market.
By Yvette M. Chin. Digital Book World March 31, 2011
.

behaviours-hedgehogs and foxes
hedgehogs are careful Internet users, taking their time to find the
right information. They prefer to go it alone, rarely relying on social
networks ..best suited to concentrating on one thing at a time.
foxes…are good at finding information quickly. They are highly social,
maintaining complex relationships with the other members of their
social group, often using social networks, or other sites whose content
is created by its users, as sources of information.. They like to know a
little about a lot of things. Web foxes tend to be younger (16–24).
With the impending big switch from the use of static to mobile
platforms – big changes in information and reading behaviour
are bound to happen
Ebook consumption : CIBER Research [Challenges of ebooks] briefing Feb 2013
http://ebookchallenge.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Ebook_consumption_CIBERResearch_briefing_Feb2013.pdf

technology issues
“The dedicated e-book reader, such as the Kindle, and
mobile devices, such as the iPhone, offer significant
advantage over the personal computer as well as the print
book for a noteworthy number of respondents”.
University of California Libraries UC Libraries Academic e-Book Usage Survey. Springer
eBook Pilot Project. May 2011. [page 5]

conceptual issues-pedagogy
“In essence, many students were hoping that technology
would evolve to become capable of returning the
perfect answer and that they would not have to
critically evaluate. This notion is very much in tension
with academic notions of what it means to ‘learn’ and how
this differs from simply providing a ‘correct’ answer”.
‘Like at first it was just Google and just research papers. And then, I
don’t have all the time, I just want a direct answer, I don’t want to
read about everyone’s problems and symptoms’.
Ebook consumption Visitors & residents Briefing Feb 2013
http://ebookchallenge.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2013/07/Ebook_consumption_Visitorsresidents_Briefing_Feb2013.pdf

business models
“As for its business model and offerings, Fortune’s Senior
Editor-at-Large Adam Lashinsky, Sr., called Inkling’s
business model “revolutionary”: “Students can buy single
chapters of books for $3, allowing them to spread out the
cost of expensive textbooks. Publishers will like this model
as well because, if Inkling’s technology is widely adopted,
the market for second-hand books will go away.
Today, publishers only make money selling new books. In
an Inkling future their revenue streams will recur with
each new class.”
An Inkling of the Future? Enhanced Ebooks and the College Textbook Market. By Yvette
M. Chin. Digital Book World March 31, 2011

business models
“Publishers will have direct access to
consumers, they’ll have access to data about how their
content is performing, and they’ll be able to monetize
through the world’s largest storefront, which we think is
Google,’’ says MacInnis,
A Google spokesman says: “Our goal with search is to make
information accessible to people and help them get the
answers they’re looking for”
Inkling Builds a Better (and Pricier) E-Book By Danielle Kucera 12 February 2013

business models
“2013 could be the year that publishers
refine their businesses and take ownership of
the relationship with their readers”
Publishing CEOs on Direct-to-Consumer Sales and Marketing. By Hannah Johnson
Publishing Perspectives. 16 January 2013.
http://publishingperspectives.com/2013/01/publishing-ceos-on-direct-to-consumer-sales-
and-marketing/
FuturDialog: Predictions for the Book Industry – is
selling direct to readers the best way forward?
Book Industry Communication
Tuesday, 8 April 2014. London, United Kingdom

technology
“The ebook landscape is an evolving model with
rapid changes in technologies and formats in
recent years; however, it is still early days
compared to other media such as music and films.
The surge in interest in ebooks and ebook readers
may have caught many Higher and Further
Education institutions by surprise. They may not
yet be in position to exploit to the full the
potential that the format can bring to
education.”
JISC TechWatch: Preparing for Effective Adoption and Use of Ebooks in Education.
November 2012. [page 53]

Do ebooks do a
good job of giving
us what we want?
Not yet.
Do they inspire us,
and open our
minds to new ways
of thinking, as
they certainly
could? For the
most part, no.'The ebook revolution hasn't even begun' By Gaby Wood. Telegraph 30 Mar 2014
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10732764/The-ebook-revolution-
hasnt-even-begun.html
“The ebook revolution hasn't even begun”

Thinking of ebooks and
printed books as
comparable is like assuming
that anything conveyed by
means of the written word
is a poem.
Publishers have got to
stop thinking of their
digital products as
“books”, and start
imagining more expansive
ways of communicating
information. Until then, the
digital revolution hasn’t
even begun.
'The ebook revolution hasn't even begun' By Gaby Wood. Telegraph 30 Mar 2014
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10732764/The-ebook-revolution-
hasnt-even-begun.html
“The ebook revolution hasn't even begun”

Part 2-thinking about
solutions
(in a competitive environment. People
have alternatives to what you offer)

...a structured approach
to looking at ‘needs’
and solutions.........
http://www.kenchadconsulting.com/how-we-can-help/innovation

“people don’t want quarter-inch
drills, they want quarter-inch
holes.”
Theodore Levitt of the Harvard Business
School.
(this also illustrates how there will be hierarchy of ‘wants’. E.g.
holes for shelves, shelves for books, books for knowledge,
knowledge to increase reputation.... etc..)

so..... users/customers don't want an
ebook or a journal article or a book or a...
they want.......................??

...they want..........to get a
job done
people 'hire' (with money, time
effort) products and services to
accomplish a task, achieve a goal or
solve a problem.
these are the
“jobs-to-be-done”.”

jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) –the elements
(1) What is the ‘job’ –the problem that needs to
be solved?
(2) Who needs to solve the problem
(3) What is the particular circumstance of the
problem (i.e. I’m on the train with a smart
phone)?
http://www.kenchadconsulting.com/how-we-can-help/innovation/

jobs-to-be-done approach
pinpointing the opportunity...
What is the fundamental problem?
What objectives are used to evaluate the solution?
What barriers limit the solution?
What solutions do customers consider?
What opportunities exist for (innovative) solutions?

jobs-to-be-done approach
Analysing the ‘job’ with customers
What is the problem you are facing..and why do you care?
What is the process you currently use to solve that problem?
What alternatives do you consider when going through this process
Why do you select the option you select?
What do you like about the current option
What don’t you like about it
What frustrates you when trying to solve this problem

as well as looking at user needs this
methodology is designed to test
potential solutions.
It can be used as an evaluation tool
for current and potential solutions

what barriers does it overcome?
who would hire this solution?
what objectives can it address?
in what circumstances will it be effective?
for what jobs is the solution applicable?
what are the solution's capabilities?
analysing (potential) solutions
thinking about ebooks as a solution

why should people use our products
and/or services instead of
alternatives?
does your ebook provision get your
customers’ jobs done better than the
competition?
in the end of course it's about value

Ebooks: what are they good for?

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